Previous: Days of Glory

Next: Day of Wrath

The war was a terrible thing, even more terrible because its leaders never knew they were being tricked and guided by one man - a man who came from a universe which no longer existed. He was Heljanita the Toymaker, who spun a crooked wheel that distorted minds and dimensions.

And Heljanita was particularly interested in Mark Chaos.

Cover by Kelly Freas

Published in 1971 by Ace

Dedicated to Mark Williamson

Yet Beasts and Humans were exactly alike - except that ten thousand years before the Beasts had originated from zoological gene banks under the deft hands of the construct surgeons.

The horrors of the war were more horrible because neither Beasts nor Humans realized that they were being tricked and guided by one man - a man who came from a universe which no longer existed.

He was Heljanita the Toymaker, who spun a crooked wheel that distorted minds and dimensions. And he was particularly interested in Mark Chaos...

Cover illustration by Patrick Woodroffe.

Published in 1974 by Quartet.
ISBN:0-704-31102-X

Review by Ian Braidwood

Cast of Characters:
Mark Chaos, Yvaine of Ciona, Deepness of Ciona, Jose Wandour, Sealight, Martin Flayr, Lavault, Reefrain, Johannes Palmoon, The Mother, Marianna of Hyla, Darkscar of Despair, Moonglow of Amia, Adam December, Calypso, Heljanita the Toymaker.

Whereas The Days of Glory is a retelling of The Iliad, In the Kingdom of the beasts recapitulates much of The Odyssey. For Odysseus, read Mark Chaos and for Ithaca, read Aquila. You'll recognise Cyclops when you meet him, just as you recognised Troy in The House of Stars, but that's as far as I can take you, because I haven't read either of Homer's books.

I can say that In The Kingdom of the Beasts is a far better story than The Days of Glory and I suspect that this relationship is a mirror of The Iliad and The Odyssey too. I'll leave it to one of you gentle readers to expand on this topic.

As usual, this book is packed with ideas to explore and excite. Brian revisits ideas about hive mentality we saw in The Blind Worm, but just as the vampires in Young Blood are completely different from those in The Empire of Fear; the treatment of hive organisms explores different aspects of the topic in this book. In fact the treatment is too brief and would make a fascinating book in its own right.

My favourite part of this novel is Darkscar's rationale for sentience, which draws a distinction between life and thought; before proposing that intelligence, mind etc are essentially matters of communication.

These are the things, which attracted me to Science Fiction. You can keep your rogue computers.